Hawaiian Tropic Is Just Misunderstood, Owner SaysThis week’s New Yorker offers a touching portrait of a restaurant mogul in pain – in this case, food-court mogul Dennis Riese, the owner of Hawaiian Tropic Zone. Riese knows that people consider the Zone little better than an upscale Hooters, or worse, a strip club. But nothing could be further from the truth, he says: For one thing, there are “no nipples.” You can’t very well have a strip club without nipples, can you? Of course, even nipples wouldn’t necessarily make the Zone woman-unfriendly. “Women like sexy. Talk about empowerment and feminism! There’s nowhere offering women sexy in the way they would like it to be — classy sexy!” The short piece is probably a ten on what ESPN’s Bill Simmons likes to call the Unintentional Comedy Scale, but we feel a twinge of sympathy for the Zone, having actually been forced to eat at the regular Hooters, which, “talent” aside, has pretty awful food.
In The Zone [NYer]
Related: Hawaiian Tropic Zone’s Tina Marino Probably Won’t Be Sharing Her Life With You
The Go-Go Gourmet
